


Familiar Magic

by Iztarshi (khilari)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Magician and Familiar AU, and no outline of any kind, complicated platonic crushes, complicated romantic crushes, this fic has feelings instead of plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 15,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21550051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khilari/pseuds/Iztarshi
Summary: The Magnus Institute of Magical Research attracts a certain number of newly qualified and unattached magicians, and therefore a certain number of fae with an interest in becoming familiars. Martin is perhaps the least qualified magician at the Institute, Jon is the rare fae there to do an actual job. They'd probably make this complicated enough without other people taking an interest in them, but the Head of the Institute has his eye on Jon and his finfolk familiar is hanging around Martin.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Peter Lukas, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James & Michael
Comments: 288
Kudos: 529





	1. Something Fishy

Peter is finfolk, even on land with legs rather than a tail he has long silvery-iridescent fins running down his arms and legs, only half hidden by the loose grey cashmere he wears. This would be more impressive if he hadn’t decided to learn to talk to humans by reading every training manual in the Institute, which makes him decidedly wearing after a while.

“Look, why are you hanging around me?” Martin asks, aware that this is probably a stupid thing to say to a powerful magical being, especially a predatory one.

Peter blinks, lids flicking sideways over his eyes. “You are a magician,” he says. “Being a familiar has its advantages.”

“You already _have_ a magician,” Martin says, exasperated. There’s no way Peter’s thinking of trading in the Head of the Institute for a half-trained magician who lied about his qualifications. Which means he’s just bugging Martin for unknown reasons, possibly because he’s bored.

“For now,” Peter says, cold voice surprisingly bitter. “If you haven’t noticed he’s courting a replacement, everyone else has.”

“He’s not really going after Jon is he?” Martin says. “I thought…”

“You thought you might stand a chance?”

“No, not really.” Jon is a moroi, drawing what he wants from people in their dreams, he’s a bit out of Martin’s league. In more ways than one, to be honest.

Jon is maybe not to everyone’s taste, with short black fur and four extremely piercing amber eyes, but most people around the institute are used to fae kinds of beauty, even if he’s not the silvery, ethereal sort, and he’s really handsome. He also has a tendency to only use one pair of eyes at once because he wears reading glasses over the lower pair and shuts them when he looks up instead of taking his glasses off, and he bites his lip with one tiny fang when he’s concentrating, and wears plastic claw-sheaths so he doesn’t tear the books he’s always studying. It’s _endearing_ , no matter how brusque he is or how much his stare can make magicians quail.

Martin sighs. “I thought maybe Tim, or Sasha. He respects them.”

“But not you,” Peter says.

Martin hides a wince. The downside of faking your qualifications is looking stupid rather than inexperienced and Jon doesn’t suffer fools gladly. “I never had a chance with him to begin with,” he says, as if that makes it better.

“But you do have a chance with me,” Peter tells him. “That’s not bad, you know. If nothing else I have rarity value.”

That just makes it less clear why Peter is going after _him_ as far as Martin’s concerned. Maybe it’s some sort of odd revenge on Jonah, to pick the lowest qualified magician in the whole Institute. “I’ll think about it,” he says. “But I’ve got to get back to work right now.”

“Of course,” Peter says. “Don’t let me keep you.”

* * *

The next day Jon comes in to work with fur clumpy from being unbrushed, which means he probably stayed far too late and came in far too early, caught up in something he couldn’t tear himself away from. It’s _terrible_ because Martin can’t help thinking it looks uncomfortable and wishing he could do something about it. Which leads to mental images of gently brushing Jonathan Sims, images which are neither remotely appropriate for work nor conducive to productivity.

Then Jon snaps at him for including perytons in a list of sky-associated magical creatures to be researched when apparently they’d been made up by some author ages ago.

“Are we going to see a dissertation on smurfs next?” Jon asks him, shoving the list back into Martin’s hands with ‘perytons’ crossed out and two new things added. “Find books on those and run them by me _before_ you start taking notes.”

Martin goes to the break room a bit early, puts the kettle on and starts getting out mugs and a selection of biscuits for everyone. It was an understandable error, he thinks. Considering the things that do exist, man-eating flying deer seemed pretty reasonable to him.

Tim and Sasha come in, talking about a date Tim had last night, and Martin drifts around making tea for them until there’s a lull in the conversation. At which point he says, “Um.”

“What’s up?” Sasha asks him.

“I was just wondering what you two thought of Jon,” Martin says, his tone of voice making it a question not about what they think of Jon but whether it’s okay for him to have been wondering.

Sasha and Tim exchange a look. “He’s okay,” Sasha says. “Why?”

“I just… he’s going to become a familiar, isn’t he?” says Martin. Not all fae did, but most fae who hung around the Magnus Institute were at least thinking about it. Granted, Jon was different, since he was an actual researcher, but if he planned to keep working in the Magical Research field when most of the research was from the perspective of human magicians it was a logical step. “And you two work in his area.”

“Thinking better of making an offer after he got on your case?” Tim asks sympathetically.

“No, I-I, I just wondered,” Martin says. “I mean, I wasn’t going to ask. He’d never — I mean, me?”

“I’m not planning on having a familiar,” Tim says. “And Sasha’s got Michael.”

“I don’t have Michael,” Sasha says. “He’s not even courting me, he still says he’s Gertrude’s familiar.”

“Which he isn’t,” Tim says.

“Which he isn’t,” Sasha agrees. “But she gave him his name and I think he’s got a lot of feelings about her or something. He just hangs around me because he doesn’t dare bother her.”

Most of the fae at the institute are scared stiff of Gertrude, who somehow holds a researcher position despite her focus largely going to a very successful career as an amateur exorcist. Most of the humans too. Definitely Martin.

“Jon doesn’t like anyone,” Tim tells Martin. “I think you’d have as much of a shot with him as anyone else.”

Martin starts putting out more biscuits as an excuse not to meet anyone’s eyes. “What about Jonah Magnus? I heard he was… talking to Jon.” Somehow he can still tell when Tim and Sasha exchange another look behind his back.

“He’s still contracted to Peter,” says Sasha. “He’s not going to do anything.”

“Right,” says Martin, thinking of how bitter Peter had sounded. “…Right.”

* * *

When Peter invites Martin out for a drink later that week, Martin finds himself agreeing. It’s not that he likes Peter, but at least they’re both willing to take each other’s problems seriously. Also, Peter’s paying.

“I wouldn’t mind if it was Tim or Sasha,” he tells Peter once they’re both a few drinks in. “But Jonah Magnus? He’s, what, two hundred? And Jon’s _my age_.” Not that people usually worry about age differences in magician/familiar relationships and if they did the worry would go decidedly in the other direction most of the time. He squints at Peter. “How old are you anyway?”

“Fifty-three,” Peter says, as if that’s a reasonable question.

“Really?” It’s not that Peter doesn’t look fifty, he does look fifty, but Martin’s used to the idea that any fae that’s started to age must be considerably older than that.

“We’re not all immortal,” Peter says. “Good thing too, I think. Better not to have more life than you know what to do with.”

If Peter only has a mortal lifespan and whatever life-extending magic Jonah uses will let him live forever, then isn’t it doubly unfair that he’s so eager to dump Peter for something new? He couldn’t just wait? Plus, Peter’s been the familiar Martin’s heard of in association with Jonah Magnus for as long as Martin can remember, which means Peter can’t have been much more than Jon’s age when Jonah contracted with him. Martin pats Peter’s shoulder without thinking. “I’m sorry he’s a dick,” he says. Peter makes a noise in his throat that might be assent or protest and leans into Martin’s hand slightly. His skin’s cool to the touch. “God, I wish he wasn’t taking an interest in Jon. I don’t want him to —” He swallows the rest of the sentence, the _treat Jon the way he’s treated you_.

“He was really sweet when he was courting me,” Peter says, wistfully. “He used to send me victims. He’d give them little gold ‘protective charms’ so I knew they were from him.”

Martin draws his hand back sharply. “That’s awful.”

Peter blinks at him slowly. “I thought it was nice.”

“ _I’m_ human,” Martin says. “I’m not really okay with the whole… eating people. Luring them to their deaths.”

“Jonah never minded.”

“Yeah, well, he is, as established previously, a dick.”

Peter mutters sulkily, “I am what I am,” and takes another drink.

“Do you _have_ to? Is human flesh…” Martin knows some fae have to. He’d guiltily looked up moroi and found out that Jon is definitely feeding on people to survive, although he doesn’t have to kill them. Jon is a good person, and raised by humans too, so Martin trusts that he isn’t killing people, that he’s doing the best he can (and maybe that’s why he looks so thin).

“No, it’s just… it’s natural. Instinctive,” Peter says, before giving Martin what he probably thinks is a sly glance. “You could contract me not to.”

Martin rolls his eyes. “If you’re going to court me you can start by not eating people,” he says.

“All right,” Peter says, with sudden brightness. “I can do that.”

* * *

Peter takes to turning up sometimes when Martin’s looking for sources in the library and “helping”. No, that’s unfair, he _is_ helping. When it comes to magic, to fae, and to the relationships between fae, Peter does know what he’s talking about, it’s just easy to tune him out before he manages to get around to saying it.

Peter usually vanishes into mist if anyone else enters the room, but Jon’s clearly either caught sight of him or somehow sensed him, because he asks, “Why is Peter Lukas helping with your research?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think maybe he’s bored.” Martin says. It’s not that he doesn’t want to admit to Jon that another fae is courting him, it’s just that it’s a bit embarrassing. Especially when he’s sort of stringing Peter along, and he feels like a jerk for that, but he’s going to feel like a bigger jerk if he says _no, give up on me and go back to murdering people_.

“You’d think he’d have enough to do, working with Jonah,” Jon says.

“Jonah seems to find enough time to drop by here too,” Martin says, unable to stop himself.

Jon looks up, bottom pair of eyes closed behind his glasses. “I’m working on some research for him. On moroi, actually. I doubt Peter’s suddenly researching amateur poets.”

Martin flushes slightly. “Peter’s not doing any harm. I think he’s lonely… and that’s not great, you know, when he’s contracted.”

“He could always spend more time with Jonah and less time pestering you.”

Martin shrugs. It’s not great that Peter’s courting him while still contracted, when you look at it like that. As a fae he literally can’t be the one to break the contract, but he’s giving up on it while it’s still active and ignoring his own magician. Even if he’s only doing it to get even. “Why do you care if it’s getting the research done faster?” he asks.

Jon makes a disgruntled sound and changes which pair of eyes is open so he can go back to reading. “I don’t,” he says. “Just make sure Jonah doesn’t mind. I don’t want him complaining you’re keeping his familiar from his work.”

_Jonah can jump in a lake,_ Martin thinks but he just says, “Okay.” It’s not as if Jon’s going to check up on whether he asked. He hopes.


	2. Sour Milk

Martin goes to make a cup of tea before work one morning only to find the milk’s gone sour. He wrinkles his nose and decides he’s early enough to justify running down to Tesco, especially since no one else will be getting their tea either if he doesn’t. It’s only when he comes back with more milk (and a pack of ginger biscuits he’d rather fancied) and opens it to find that sour as well that he starts to feel decidedly put out.

He’s just poured both bottles down the sink and is cleaning the sink when Sasha comes in.

“What’s that smell?” she asks.

“Sour milk,” Martin says, with a sigh. “I’d just bought the second bottle too. D’you know what does that?”

To his surprise Sasha looks guilty. “Well, there are a couple of fae who can,” she says. “But. Puca, kobolds and boggarts, mostly.”

There’s only one boggart in the institute that Martin knows of. “You’re not responsible for Michael’s tricks,” Martin says. “If you could talk to him, though?”

“I’ll try after work,” Sasha says. “I hope this is just our department, I worry about him sometimes.”

Martin isn’t sure it would be such a bad thing for Michael to anger the wrong person and get banished. The Institute might welcome unattached fae in general, but it’s no place for a boggart, especially one who keeps leading people astray in the tunnels. Wouldn’t he be happier back in a bog, too?

“If it’s just our department, maybe I can borrow some milk,” Martin says, as the thought occurs to him. “Or make the tea in their kitchen and bring it back.” He looks guiltily at the clock. “I’ll try at break time,” he decides.

* * *

Break time brings the discovery that all the milk in the Institute is sour. Which means no one will get tea except Jon, who doesn’t mind it black (and who takes it strong enough the dash of milk he puts in can’t make that much difference), unless someone runs out for it. Martin volunteers, not minding the chance to stretch his legs, and when he comes back Jon is rummaging angrily through the entire department.

“What’s up?” he asks, putting the tray down.

“Jon can’t find his glasses,” Tim says, with barely concealed amusement.

“But he never takes them off,” Martin says.

Jon looks up at him, gaze twice as irritated with four eyes. “And this is _why_ ,” he says. “I must have this time, maybe I was cleaning them.” He shakes his head. “I’ll have to go home for my spare ones. Just carry on.”

Martin looks around a bit after Jon leaves, just in case he can find them, and then reluctantly returns to his research on “fairy ointments for seeing hidden things”. He’s dreading the practical research, although he’d been trying to play to his strengths by choosing something he can make in advance instead of needing to cast on the spot. At least he can ask Peter to be invisible when he needs something to test it on. Maybe there’s another book he could add a few more references from instead of going to the labs?

He’s dawdling around the vision spell section when someone he doesn’t know comes in, a goth guy with long, dyed black hair, and a sense of purpose that makes Martin feel pathetic for his procrastination. The guy stops at the section on protection spells and runs his hand over the spines as he reads the titles, pulling one out and balancing it on his free arm occasionally, until Martin sees the bookshelf wobble.

“Look out!” Martin yells, but goth guy’s evidently seen it too because he drops his books and grabs the bookcase with both hands, pushing it back upright. He doesn’t look frightened, barely startled, and Martin has a feeling he’s the one who just got a scare.

“Thanks,” goth guy says, giving the bookcase a tap as he lets go of it. “I think that’s stable now.”

“Oh, well, I didn’t really… it looks like you had it handled,” Martin says, coming over to help pick up the books.

The guy shrugs. “Thanks anyway.”

“No problem.” Martin hands the books over. “Are you a new hire here? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“In a manner of speaking. I’m Gertrude’s new familiar.” The guy shifts the books to one arm and holds out his hand. “Gerard Keay.”

“Oh, really?” Gerard looks human. The tells on a fae aren’t always obvious, but even his eyes are just dark brown. “Um, sorry. Martin Blackwood. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise.” Gerard lets go of Martin’s hand. “I’d better get these back to Gertrude. Earn my keep,” he says. “See you.”

Martin thinks about this encounter for a few minutes after Gerard leaves and then hurries back to his own department without any books.

* * *

“Sasha,” Martin says urgently, making her look up from her computer. “Gertrude’s got a new familiar. I just met him in the library and a bookcase nearly fell over on him.”

Sasha looks up, confused for a moment before going pale. “Michael.”

“Yeah,” says Martin.

“We should tell someone,” Tim says, coming over to perch on Sasha’s desk. “An out of control boggart could be really dangerous.”

“I think Gertrude will be able to figure this one out,” Martin tells him.

Sasha stands up. “I’m going to talk to him,” she says.

Tim grabs her arm. “Hey, wait. An out of control boggart is dangerous to everyone.”

“I _know_ ,” Sasha says. “But if he hurts Gertrude’s familiar she could do a lot worse than banish him. I’ve heard stories.”

Tim gives Martin an accusing look which is fair, it really is. It had seemed natural to tell Sasha about something happening with Michael, he hadn’t really thought about how much danger she could be putting herself in confronting an angry boggart she’s not contracted with.

“I’ll come with,” Martin says.

“Thanks, but that won’t be necessary,” Sasha replies with a speed which reminds Martin that he’s not someone anyone would want by their side in an emergency. He’d just be one more thing to worry about, wouldn’t he?

“I’ll come,” Tim says, reluctantly. “If you have to go.”

“Okay,” Sasha says. “Thanks.” She turns back to smile at Martin from the door. “Cover for us to Jon.”

* * *

Martin frets back and forth about whether he’s going to cover to Jon. He doesn’t want to put Jon in danger, but Jon’s powerful, isn’t he? Everyone says moroi are powerful. But what if that’s only when it comes to something really specific, the way so much fae magic is, what if telling Jon does put him in danger? Tim and Sasha are already in danger, though, and someone ought to help. He won’t lie about it if Jon asks where they are, he decides.

In the end Jon comes in and sits back down at his desk without asking at all, and Martin still blurts out, “Sasha and Tim have gone to find Michael. Gertrude’s got a new familiar and he tried to kill him.”

“What?” Jon looks up.

“I met him in the library, the new familiar, and a bookcase nearly fell on him. Between that and the milk… it’s Michael, right? I should probably tell Gertrude, but Sasha… he’s not hers, I know, but now she’s gone after him…”

“Was Sasha courting him?” Jon asks.

“No, but she would have been if he hadn’t insisted he was Gertrude’s,” says Martin. “You didn’t know about that?”

“I don’t keep up with the gossip,” Jon says. He bites his lip and Martin realises Jon doesn’t have any more idea what to do than he does. “We should find them,” Jon says, taking his newly acquired glasses off and shutting them carefully in a drawer. “Just in case.”

* * *

“A boggart would be a terrible familiar, especially for Sasha,” Jon opines, as they walk through the tunnels. Most of Martin’s energy is going into tracking Sasha, every strand of hair wrapped around the scrunchie he’d found in her desk warm in his hand. “She’s mostly good at finding magic, or analysing, and he’s the opposite. Chaotic.”

“Shh,” Martin says. “He does _live_ down here, Jon.”

“Oh, right.”

The tunnels under the institute are unused, partly because there’s not much you can use a bunch of tunnels for, and partly because they provide a place for the fae who prefer being underground. Martin’s heard there’s a whole bunch of dvergar down here somewhere, and there are several reputable accounts of knockers, but they stay out of the way most of the time. Michael’s presence here is a lot more obvious, for one thing the tunnels have become nearly impossible to navigate, and glimpses of light usually mean you’re being led deeper. For another they’ve picked up a thin coating of slime that probably makes him feel at home but is just making it hard for Martin to keep his footing.

Martin stops when he sees a figure ahead of them in the light of Jon’s torch, breath catching until he realises it’s too tall for a boggart. Jon’s torch swings up and Martin sees Gerard, looking at them with an air of frustration.

The walls reverberate with deep knocks and all three of them run before half the ceiling falls where they were standing.

“Thanks!” Martin yells, because it might be the nature of knockers to warn of disaster but it still pays to be polite and they’ve probably angered Michael by doing it. “I’ll bring you pasties!”

There are a few quick taps of acknowledgement and the sound of feet moving away.

“Who are you?” Jon asks Gerard.

“Gerard Keay,” says Gerard. “Who are you?”

“Um, Jon,” says Martin. “This is him. The new familiar.”

Jon frowns. “You know there’s something down here trying to kill you?”

“Yeah,” says Gerard.

“And you still came down here?” Jon continues.

Gerard shrugs. “Mostly I didn’t want anyone between it and me. I can take care of myself. What are _you_ doing down here?”

“Our co-workers heard what was happening and came down here, we’re trying to find them.”

“Why?” Gerard asks, still with that air of irritation, like they’re just making the situation more complicated for him. “They don’t even know me, and like I said I can take care of myself.”

“I’m afraid you’re not the one they were worried about,” Jon says.

“You should find them quickly and get out of here —” Gerard starts.

A light appears in the distance and they all fall quiet, watching it. “Michael?” Jon calls.

Michael comes closer, stepping out of the shadows as if he’s always been there, eyes the same sickly gold as the light caged between his twig-like fingers. He’s half the height of a man, a thin, distorted shape with hands as big as his torso ending in sharp claws. Golden curls fluff out around his head, while a darker golden pelt covers his body. He wears a long coat sewn together from scraps of fabric with mismatched lengths of wool.

The light in Michael’s hand goes out, leaving just those eyes reflecting Jon’s torchlight, fixed on Gerard. “ _You_ are what she chooses?” he says.

Gerald holds his hands out to his sides. “She didn’t choose me like that, I was in a bad situation. She helped.”

Michael curls his lip. “She ripped me from my bog. She named me and made it so I could never be part of it again. Then she refused to make me part of her world either, to take responsibility. But now she takes a _fairy knight_ as her familiar, barely even fae.”

Gerard suddenly jumps to one side. Something stings the side of Martin’s head like he’s just had a brush with a hot stove. He sits up, wondering why he was on the ground, and feels warm blood trickling down the side of his head in contrast to the cold slime seeping through his trousers.

Jon drops the torch, the light rolling across the walls no longer aimed anywhere near Michael, and when he steps forward in front of Martin he’s a shadow against it. “I see you,” he says, quite calmly, and then he pounces.

There’s a wild flurry of shadows and Martin grabs the torch, swinging it around to aim at the brawling fae. Jon’s kneeling on Michael’s chest, hands, still with their little plastic claw caps, each pressing down on one of Michael’s palms. The long, long fingers on Michael’s hands are closed around Jon’s arms like bear-traps, claws digging in above his elbows.

“Go to sleep,” Jon is saying, not soft or hypnotic or even commanding. He’s just saying it, over and over again. “Go to sleep.”

Gerard drops down beside Martin and Martin feels something soft pressed against his head. He wants to tell Gerard he’s fine, he should be helping Jon, but the words don’t want to come.

The scrunchie in Martin’s hand flares hot and Sasha runs in, Tim hanging back behind her.

“Michael!” she screams. “Jon, get off him!”

Jon looks up at her and blinks, all four eyes, and Michael squirms in a way that should have dislocated half his bones, vanishing from underneath him. A sickly gold light flashes by Sasha, and she raises a hand to her cheek, and then it’s just them. Just a bunch of confused people in a tunnel.

* * *

“It’s not serious,” Tim says, when they’re all back in their own staff room sitting around drinking black tea because they needed _something_ hot. “But you should still go to the hospital. Check for concussion.” He puts the first aid kit down.

“Right,” Martin says, half-heartedly.

Jon looks up from where he’s been huddling in a chair as if he’s cold and says to Sasha, “So. You and Michael?”

“I’m sorry, Jon,” she says. “I just saw you on top of him and —”

“No, that’s - that’s understandable,” Jon says quickly. “But, if you don’t mind my asking, what are you going to do now?”

Sasha groans and puts her face in her hand. “I don’t know,” she says. “I didn’t realise how much I cared about him. He’s always been odd, sometimes he seemed to care about my problems or what I was studying and other times he’d lead me round in circles for hours or joke about eating me. It never seemed like a good idea to get attached to someone so inconsistent. And now he’s attacked Martin.”

“He wasn’t exactly aiming for me,” Martin says. “Gertrude really screwed him over.” He looks at Gerard, leaning casually against the wall with his own cup of tea. “No offense to your magician.”

“None taken,” Gerard says. “She’s like that. Does what she thinks needs doing, never mind anyone’s feelings.”

Jon sighs. “Well, I hope he’s got it out of his system now. The last thing we need is another day like that.”


	3. Hungry Work

Martin gets up early the next morning to cook pasties before work. He’s on his way back from leaving a still steaming tray of them in the tunnels when he sees Sasha on her way into the tunnels herself. He waves to her and she puts her finger to her lips, a carrier bag dangling from her other hand, as if there’s anyone around to see them besides the knockers.

“I’m not in today,” Sasha says, flashing him a quick smile.

“I’ll keep mum then,” Martin says, peering into the carrier bag. There’s Cornish ice cream made with real cream, several DVDs and a laptop in there. “Cheering Michael up?”

“I hope so,” she says. While Martin’s trying to figure out how to voice his concern without being rude she adds, “It’s okay, Martin. He kissed me yesterday.”

“He… what?”

“On the cheek,” she says. “But I really don’t think he’ll hurt me.”

“Okay,” Martin says. “Can you check in with me though? Just give me a text message in half an hour. I’ll worry.”

“Got it,” she says. “Thanks, Martin.”

Martin watches her go with mixed feelings, but _most_ fae are dangerous. It’s an established fact of courtship that they have the upper hand until the contract is actually signed. Even Jon could be dangerous if he chose to be. Martin remembers him kneeling on Michael. Remembers what he’d read about moroi feeding, how they kneel on their victims’ chests, holding them between waking and sleeping as they feed on their dreams. It makes it all so much more real to have seen him like that, even as Martin can’t help the warm flutter in his chest at the memory of Jon standing between him and danger.

“Mr Blackwood.”

Martin is knocked out of his thoughts by the smooth voice. He’s not long emerged from the tunnels, meaning Jonah Magnus, standing there waiting for him in an Institute corridor, knew where he’d be.

“Um, morning,” Martin mutters, feeling suddenly guilty about the time he’s spent with Peter helping him in the library. Not exactly regretful, but definitely anxious about being found out and called on it.

“I wanted to talk to you about Jon,” Jonah says.

Martin looks up sharply. “About _Jon?_ ”

Jonah’s smile is indulgent. “Is there someone else we should be talking about?”

“What about Jon, then?” Martin says. “I know you’ve been _taking an interest_.”

“I’m concerned for his health,” Jonah says. “He really shouldn’t be getting involved in the problems of underlings when he’s so malnourished, especially when they encourage him to attack but prevent him from feeding.”

“Malnourished?” Jon’s so thin beneath the professional suits he wears.

“Yes. Verging on dangerously so.” Jonah meets Martin’s eyes, there’s something almost captivating about his dark gaze, at the same time as it’s desperately uncomfortable to meet it. As if it might peel Martin open. “I’ve been asking him to research moroi. I thought perhaps learning more about his biology would convince him to take better care of himself.”

“Oh.” Martin can’t even say he hadn’t known he was putting Jon in danger, telling him about Sasha and Tim, he’d just been wrong about what kind. He’d thought Jon might be in danger from losing a fight with Michael, not winning one.

“You should be careful of him,” Jonah says. “It’s not healthy for fae to hold themselves to human standards, and human friends only encourage them to do so.”

“Right,” says Martin. “I’ll bear that in mind.” He manages not to blush or fluster, even though he’s pretty sure that’s a jab at his odd agreement with Peter. It’s not like Peter has to hold to it, and Martin had _checked_ he didn’t need to eat people. He’d even done some reading, just to be sure.

“Good. I’ll let you get to work.” Jonah walks off down the corridor on his way to either do paperwork or discomfit someone else.

* * *

Jon looks at the cup of tea Martin has placed next to him and surprises Martin by looking up from his work. “Martin, are you all right?” he asks.

“What? Of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“This is the fifth cup of tea you’ve given me today and it isn’t even lunchtime. Also, there’s been a different kind of biscuit each time. I didn’t even know we had five types of biscuit in the staff room.”

“Right, right. Um. You haven’t eaten any of them.”

“Martin.” Jon pushes his glasses up to rub the bridge of his nose, changing which pair of eyes he has open for a moment until they slide back down. “I know yesterday was strange. But if this is some kind of-of offering, placating the fae —”

“What? No, nono, that’s not — sorry. I’m just worried. Jonah told me off for involving you, he says you’re malnourished, and it’s not like tea and biscuits would help. I don’t know what I thought I was doing. I just —”

“Ah.” Jon looks back down at his work. “It’s really not as bad as Jonah thinks. He equates being healthy with being at full power, the fact that my diet isn’t optimised according to his books doesn’t mean I’m starving. In any case, it’s not his concern, and you don’t need to worry either.”

“Okay,” Martin says. “Sorry.”

Once he’s back at his own desk he checks Sasha’s text again. He got it hours ago, but it’s nice to know someone’s day is working out. Even if it’s with someone who tried to commit murder yesterday.

_1st movie going well, M likes terrible SFX_

A thought occurs to Martin and he texts:

_Need me to bring u lunch?_

_Thnx, but we’re going out. M knows a place._

Michael eats in restaurants? Martin thought he just haunted the Institute 24/7.

_Have a good time_ he texts back, and means it.

Boggarts might be strange and impractical familiars, magic too strongly tied to place and usually erratic on top of that, unlikely to act as the kind of consistent boost to compatible spells most magicians look for, but Martin hopes Michael and Sasha will work out. She’s always been more interested in the research and exploration side, anyway, and Michael seems like he’d be happy to play in haunted houses with her.

* * *

Martin’s in the library that afternoon when he notices the temperature’s dropped and then realises there are clinging wisps of fog on the institutional beige carpet. “Peter?” he says. He’s not terribly surprised when Peter fades in, leaning against a bookshelf. “If you’re going to be here then be here. Don’t just watch me invisibly, that’s creepy.”

“Funny,” Peter says. “That was always the part of my powerset that Jonah liked. Unseen watching.”

“I doubt he liked you spying on him,” Martin says.

Peter shrugs. “Turnabout’s fair play, as they say.”

They fall into silence for a few minutes, but it’s not a comfortable silence, Martin can feel Peter watching him. “If you’ve got something to say, then say it,” Martin snaps.

“You should have called me, yesterday,” Peter says.

Martin laughs.

“I mean it! I could have shown you how to hide yourself, you were in danger going in like that.”

“Just call up my boss’s familiar and ask him to come help me?” Martin says. “I’m not your magician, I can’t just _call on you_.”

“I’m allowed to have friends,” Peter says, sulkily.

“Yeah, but you can’t pretend he’d like it. He’d take it out on you —”

“We’re not allowed to hurt each other, that’s in the contract —”

“He’d take it out on _me_ then. He’s already not happy I got Jon involved.”

Peter takes a sharp breath. “He certainly has no right to object to that,” he says, tone hollow.

It’s a feeling familiar enough to cause a sympathetic pang in Martin’s chest and he considers the possibility that this isn’t some ploy to get back at Jonah. Maybe Peter really does simply like Martin. Maybe Peter really does have the bad luck to like someone pining over the same fae his magician is stealthily courting.

“Sorry,” Martin says. “I really can’t call on you in situations where I need back up or, or magic, you get that, right? It’s not that I don’t like you, I just can’t.”

“I suppose that’s understandable.” Peter’s standing against a bookshelf, eyes on the floor and fins fluttering slightly around him. The pallor is just part of what he is, but he looks tired.

“Want to join me for a cup of tea?” Martin finds himself saying.

Peter looks up. “Do you have bovril? I can drink tea, but it doesn’t taste of much.”

“Right. Obligate carnivore.” Peter perks up more at Martin knowing that than he did at the offer of tea, and Martin realises he’s given away that, yeah, he did do a little bit of research. “I think we’ve got bovril,” he says. “Let’s go see.”


	4. Drink Like A Fish

Gerard Keay starts dropping by Jon’s office occasionally over the next week. Martin supposes Jonah’s warning about “human friends” being bad for Jon doesn’t apply to Gerard, although he barely seems like a fae, just a guy who likes goth fashion.

“What is a fairy knight, anyway?” Martin wonders aloud, picking up two mugs from Jon’s desk, the one he’d brought Jon earlier and the one Gerard had fetched himself.

“You’ll mostly find them in the literature under changelings, although that’s poor terminology,” Jon says, absently. “They haven’t always been changed, and that can refer to both sides of the swap in any case. They’re humans who were taken by fae young and raised by them. By the time they escape, if they ever do, they’re more fae than human. I knew one in college, she was studying English.”

“Does it really work like that?” Martin asked. “I mean, you were raised by humans, right?”

“By my grandmother, yes.” Jon shrugs. “Somehow it only works one way, but it’s documented. Gerry’s magic works much more like fae magic now, and he’s able to enter a contract with a magician.”

“ _Gerry?_ ” Martin asks.

Jon coughs awkwardly. “He said he liked the name,” he says. “It’s his name.”

“Yeah, okay,” Martin says. He picks up the mugs and takes them back to the kitchen, thinking about the way Jon hadn’t even looked up although he’ll stop and chat with _Gerry_. Gerard’s a fae contracted with Gertrude, though, so there’s no way he’s courting Jon. Although he could still break Martin’s heart a different way. Martin sighs. Couldn’t he just have one crush on Jon instead of crushing on him both magically and romantically?

* * *

The door opens while Martin’s writing up the results of his experiments with the fairy ointment. In the end he’d got his results by borrowing an invisibility cloak from artefact storage and asking Tim to wear it for him.

“Peter? Are you okay?” Sasha asks, and Martin looks up at once.

Peter’s standing by the door to their shared office, he’s pale and his fins don’t seem to be able to stop fluttering, but he shakes his head. “No, I’m fine, I just wanted to see if Martin was free.”

Martin walks over and takes Peter’s arm, then lets go when Peter startles. “Come on,” he says. “We can talk in the kitchen.”

Martin puts the kettle on because it seems like the thing to do, but then stops before getting mugs and looks Peter in the face. Peter won’t meet his eyes.

“ _Are_ you okay?” Martin asks.

“Yes. Just a slight disagreement with Jonah, that’s all. I really don’t like confrontations.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No.” Peter sighs and then he does look at Martin, with a slight smile. “Unfortunately. I was trying to provoke him, but it’s hard to keep pushing.”

“You were trying…”

“It would have broken the contract, you see. Got it over with.”

Martin puts a hand on Peter’s shoulder slowly, relieved when he doesn’t startle this time. “That was stupid,” he says. “If he’d hurt you he could have _really_ hurt you.”

“But by then I would have been allowed to hurt him back,” Peter says, almost cheerfully, still pleased with himself for this stupid plan that hadn’t worked anyway.

Martin shakes him slightly. “Damn it, Peter. What are you trying to accomplish?”

“Really, Martin. Could anyone answer a question like that? Could you?”

“ _I_ just want everyone to be okay,” Martin says. Especially Jon, he thinks. Especially Peter, god damn it. Martin’s _such_ a sucker for people needing him and he knows this about himself but it still _happens_.

“You’re a nice person,” Peter says. “I’d settle for being okay myself.”

“You’re really bad at getting there,” Martin tells him.

Peter’s lips quirk. “I know.”

Martin sighs. He’s still holding Peter’s shoulder. “Drinks after work?” he asks.

Peter inclines his head. “Thank you.”

* * *

“…I came out of the sea for him, but I’m not going back just because he’s done with me,” Peter rants. “He had enough to say about why we’d be good together once, now it’s ‘our powers aren’t exactly compatible, Peter’ as if he hasn’t made enough use of them. I’ll show him what I can do with someone who _is_ compatible.”

Martin makes a sympathetic noise, which is what he’s been doing for a while, and then catches up. “Wait, I’m compatible? With what?”

“Invisibility,” Peter says, which Martin nods along to because, yeah, he can believe that. Then Peter adds, “Charm,” and Martin snorts.

“Neither of us is exactly charming,” he points out. “I would have said that fit Jonah more.”

“Does it?” says Peter. “Do _you_ find him charming?”

“I find him a supercillious ass,” Martin says, realising that while he’s some way behind Peter he’s had too much to drink too.

Peter nods carefully. “Most people do. He’s very convincing with what he says. Borrows it from me to weave around words. But charming?” He pats Martin’s shoulder and Martin realises his fingernails are longer than they were and sharper. “People like you.”

“They may like me but they don’t listen,” Martin says. “Anyway, no offence, but I don’t see how you’re charming either.”

“No, fair enough. It’s different for me, more specifisi…sic. Can make people follow me, can’t make them do anything else. Lure them in.” He leans over further, mouth almost against Martin’s ear, and suddenly he hums a few notes. It’s so short it’s barely a tune, but somehow it’s the most beautiful thing Martin’s ever heard. Soft as light through fog, wistful and wonderful. He leans towards it and then gasps and blinks when his forehead smacks against Peter’s. “Like that,” Peter says, pulling away again and taking another drink. “Only good for eating people,” he adds, mournfully.

Martin looks up at the clock on the wall. It’s late, he realises with a start. “We should get home,” he says. “I think you’ve had enough, anyway.”

Peter sighs and graps the edge of the table to heave himself up, only to fall back onto his stool with a surprised expression. Martin goes to help him up and realises with some confusion that one of Peter’s trouser legs is empty and the other looks too full. How did he somehow end up with both legs down one trouser leg when he’d had them on properly sitting down? Martin rubs his eyes and the profusion of fins at the end of the trouser leg resolve themselves into a tail.

“Peter, you need legs to stand up,” he says.

Peter looks at his tail for a moment and shrugs. “I’ve forgotten how.”

“You’ve forgotten how to have legs.”

“It is called being legless.” Peter laughs.

Martin groans. “I’m calling a taxi,” he says. “And you’re paying for it.”

* * *

Martin has to carry Peter to the taxi which is a bit of an ordeal. Martin’s a not a small man, but neither’s Peter, and it’s a very good thing Martin’s not any drunker himself. He climbs into the back after Peter and Peter immediately flops over onto him.

“Why me,” Martin mutters.

“You’re nice,” Peter answers, as if that had been an actual question. “And you’re in love with Jon, so I thought…”

“You thought?” Martin prompts.

“Thought either you’d get him and Jonah would keep me, or Jonah would get him and you’d be willing to consider… Didn’t work out so well. You _are_ nice, nice to me, I’d rather have you.”

“That’s… nice.” Awkward, but nice.

Peter sighs. “Not what you’d prefer, I know, but we could be powerful. People would listen to you.”

“Fat chance of that,” Martin says. “You don’t even listen to me.”

“I _do_. Haven’t I done what you said?”

“…I guess you have,” Martin says slowly. He doesn’t know what to do with Peter, curled up against him, a cold counterpoint to Martin’s alcohol heated skin. The finman is predatory and pitiful, inconvenient and eager to please all at once, and Martin finds himself running a hand through his silvery hair.

It would be strangely easy if Jonah wasn’t in the picture (if Jon wasn’t in the picture) to say yes, to let Peter make him a more competent magician and take care of Peter in return. Research in the library, tea in the kitchen, really so little would change.

The taxi pulls up and Martin pays before beginning the process of pulling Peter out of the car. “Have you remembered how to have legs yet?” he asks. Peter shakes his head and Martin tries to find a way to carry him that isn’t so blasted awkward. “Hold on around my neck, okay? I need to unlock the door.”

He gets inside and dumps Peter on the sofa with a groan. He’s not even going to apologise for not managing to make the landing gentle. By the time he gets back with water from the kitchen he has to shake Peter awake again and then Peter just stares owlishly at it.

“Drink it,” Martin says. “You’re _aquatic_ , I don’t want you dehydrated.”

“Oh,” Peter says. “Sorry.” He finally drinks it and promptly falls asleep again.

Martin shouldn’t have brought him back here, he thinks, watching Peter’s fins flutter in his sleep. He’s got his boss’s familiar asleep on his sofa. The fact that he got him drunk wouldn’t exactly help his case, either. _Peter’s_ probably happy with this outcome, he realises, since the alternative would be to go back to a house he shares with Jonah. Martin wonders how genuinely Peter really forgot how to have legs, and then whether he could entirely blame him if he didn’t.

Martin dithers over whether or not Peter needs a blanket considering his body temperature is low in general, and then fetches one anyway. Peter won’t overheat if he’s not producing much heat, right? Martin nods at his own sound logic and goes to bed himself.


	5. Hosts

Jon calls Martin into his office the next day. “Did Peter Lukas go home with you last night?” he asks.

“It wasn’t anything… he was just a bit drunk and it was easier and… wait. How do you know that?” Martin asks.

“Jonah mentioned it,” Jon says.

“So why were you with him?” Martin asks. “And how did he know?”

“I was working late and he dropped by to give me the paperwork for a new research assistant,” Jon says. “And that’s not the point.”

“Well, if he wants to complain about what Peter’s doing after work, he doesn’t need to talk to my boss about it.”

“He wasn’t complaining,” Jon says. “He was, um. Grateful. Amused maybe. He said you’d taken Peter off his hands for the night and he wondered if you were tired of listening to him complain yet.”

Martin bristles. “Well, that’s _very_ nice of him, considering the way he’s been acting.”

“The way Peter’s told you he’s been acting?” Jon says softly. “Martin, I, I’m worried, the way he’s acting like he’s courting you when he can’t possibly —”

“Hasn’t Jonah been doing the same with you?’

“No,” Jon says. “I don’t know, I don’t think so. Certainly not anywhere near as blatantly. This is all coming from Peter, and I’m worried he’s taking advantage of you. Your good nature.”

“Maybe I don’t mind if he is,” Martin snaps, remembering Peter curled up in the car yesterday. “At least he thinks it’s worth doing.”

“Martin —” Jon starts.

“No. No, listen, I know I’m not important. I’m just the person who makes hot drinks and tidies up after everyone and you don’t have to give me a second thought. I’m _nice_. I have a ‘good nature’. If Peter thinks that’s worth manipulating me for, manipulating me into… what? Making him a drink and listening to him for once? Maybe I’m okay with that, because no one else thinks being nice is worth _squat_.”

“ _Martin,_ ” Jon says, and the pleading tone doesn’t register with Martin until he’s already stormed out and slammed the door. He sits down at his desk and puts his face in his hands.

“Wow,” Tim says.

“Shut it, Tim,” Martin says, tiredly.

There’s a flash of green light under the door and then Michael appears standing next to Sasha’s desk. He turns to face the door, unusually solemn.

All of them stand up, eyes on the door, pulling closer instinctively. The air smells of blood. Jon emerges from his office behind them and grabs Martin’s wrist in one hand and Tim’s in the other, plastic claw sheaths digging into Martin’s wrist.

The door opens and Jonah steps in, Peter close behind him. Peter’s standing straight, eyes flat as a shark’s, the air heavy and hushed around him and Jonah. They move aside and a young woman follows, dark and scarred, hopping awkwardly on crutches with a bandaged leg, and eyes roving over them with a feral attention as if she’s sizing up which of them she could kill most easily. After her comes a fae, dressed in torn khaki and ancient leather armour, guns and swords alike at his hips, a face jutting forward like a beak and a leathery cloak that resolves itself into leathery wings.

“This is Melanie King,” Jonah says, indicating the young woman. “Having been injured in the line of duty, she’s going to be working for us while she recovers.” He indicates the fae standing behind her, filling most of the door. “And this is Booth, her familiar.”

Jon doesn’t let go of Tim and Martin although etiquette would dictate greeting Booth and Melanie. “Is he staying too?” he asks.

“No,” Booth says. “I have a war to fight.” He looks their way as he speaks and his eyes are even brighter than Melanie’s, even more feral. The air is so heavy with the scent of blood that Martin can taste it. The restless prickly sensation of being watched runs up his arm and makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Michael leans against Sasha and when Martin glances over both their eyes are glowing faintly green.

Jon nods. “Welcome aboard, Melanie,” he says.

Melanie looks at the desks. “Which one’s mine?” she asks.

“That one,” Martin says. “Here, I’ll help —” But when he tries to step forward Jon holds him back.

Melanie snorts. “Some welcome,” she says. “Thanks.”

Booth steps into the room and wraps clawed hands around her waist, lifting her easily to her new desk. She turns on him and snarls, “I’m _fine_.”

“If that was true you’d be coming with me,” Booth says. He looks at Jonah. “I’m done here.”

“Hey!” Melanie stumbles to her feet, grabbing for her crutches. “Don’t you fucking ignore me.”

Booth walks out and Jonah pauses to say, “I hope you’ll be very happy here, Melanie,” before following him, Peter on his heels. With them gone, both the heaviness and the blood scent fall away and Martin can breath again. Sasha sits down and Michael climbs into her lap. Jon draws a deep breath and lets go of both Martin and Tim, the prickling watched feeling retreating with his hand.

“What was _that?_ ” Tim asks.

“I believe Booth was a member of the sluagh, the war host,” Jon says. “Melanie?”

“That’s right,” Melanie says. She picks up a crutch almost meditatively and then slams it into the wall. “ _Fuck_ him.”

Martin jumps and then says, “I’ll, um, I’ll make us some tea, shall I? Welcome aboard, Melanie.”

* * *

It’s rough working with Melanie in the room. She seems to hate everything she studies, looking at each book as if it’s personally offended her, and she seems to hate everyone in the room, too. Michael refuses to get off Sasha’s lap, reducing her to working around him, and Tim and Martin escape to the library.

“Seriously, what was that?” Tim asks. “And I don’t mean Booth. You felt it too, right?”

“I think Jon was trying to protect us,” Martin says slowly, rubbing at his wrist. “Michael went to Sasha and Peter was guarding Jonah. Jon and Peter are both pretty powerful and the way they reacted to Booth he’s got to be, right? So that was a lot of magic in the air.”

“I’ve never seen them all react like a bunch of cats when a dog just walked in,” Tim says. “I’ve seen sidhe walk in and not get that reaction.”

“Are sidhe especially bad?” Martin asks doubtfully. They’re what a lot of people think of as the standard fae and they’re a long way from harmless, but not a death sentence to see either.

“Yeah,” says Tim. “Maybe. I mean, they kill people, but so do lots of fae. Who cares about that?”

There’s a painful bitterness in Tim’s words and Martin puts a hand on his shoulder without thinking. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Tim says. “Come on, let’s go back. See if Melanie’s made a hole in the wall yet.”

“I’ll stay for a bit,” Martin says. “I do actually have some books I need to find.” Which is a complete lie, but a totally plausible one, and Tim leaves him to wander around the shelves and avoid their new coworker for a bit longer.

* * *

Martin’s choice to stay in the library backfires on him when Melanie walks in. Despite her intimidating expression she’s struggling to get a good look at the books, unable to bend down on crutches or walk at a leisurely pace rather than an awkward hop. It’s enough for Martin to go over.

“Do you want some help?” he asks. “I know where most things are.”

“I’m looking for books on healing,” Melanie says.

Martin leads her over to the section they have on that. It’s quite big, healing research is one of the things that gets lots of donors.

“If you’re studying healing I’m surprised you didn’t get put with one of the departments doing that,” Martin says. “They’re bigger than ours.”

“Different kind of healing,” Melanie says shortly. “Elf shot.”

“It’s for your leg, right?”

Melanie hesitates. “Yeah. Booth says I can go back to the battlefield sooner if I figure out how to heal myself. Says I’ll be more _useful_ too. Jerk.”

“You, ah, who are you fighting? I mean, you’re a soldier?”

Melanie snorts. “Other sluagh,” she says. “I’m not an English soldier.”

Martin knows that can happen, that fae choosing to join the human world isn’t the only way around it can work. Magicians can leave human society and follow their familiars into theirs. But, an endless battlefield, an endless war? What reason would someone have to choose that?

“And you, um, want to go back?”

“Yeah.” Melanie raises her head to look at him and Martin feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up at the wildness in her eyes. “I hate being useless. Being _weak_. I want to go back.”

“Right.” Martin ducks his head and hurries down a few shelves. “This… I think this section is magical diseases and injuries. It’s probably what you want.”

“Got it,” Melanie says. She doesn’t thank him.

* * *

Martin goes out for lunch with Tim and Sasha. He considers inviting Jon, but Jon usually works through lunch and that would mean they’d invited everyone in the department except Melanie.

“What’s her deal, anyway?” Tim says. “Or Booth’s for that matter? It’s like he owns her.”

“Some magicians treat their fae like that, too,” Martin says. “Guess it goes both ways.”

“Sometimes it’s just personality,” says Sasha. “Sometimes it’s a bad contract. You’ve heard the warnings, right?”

Martin nods and thoughtfully eats a bit of cheese sandwich. “What kind of contracts are bad?” he asks.

“Didn’t you take classes on this?” Sasha asks.

Martin shrugs. “It was a while ago. Guess I wasn’t paying enough attention back then.”

“I skipped them,” Tim says, blithely. “I already knew I wasn’t going to have a familiar.”

Sasha shakes her head. “Do I need to give you two a rundown on contracts?” she asks.

“ _I_ don’t need one unless we’re solving the Mystery of Melanie,” says Tim. “But Martin could use a refresher.”

“Yeah,” Martin says sheepishly, wishing he didn’t always wind up looking stupid. “I could.”

“Okay,” Sasha says. She puts her sandwich down and goes into lecturing mode. “The heart of a contract is the part where you agree to share power. That’s the only bit that really needs to be there, and it’s something that comes into effect by signing the contract itself.

“After that, there’s an agreement to share power only with each other. A magician would lose a lot of the benefit if a fae was sharing their power out among several others and a fae would lose their standing if a magician could just contract with additional fae, especially when fae can’t break the contracts themselves.

“Sharing power is more to the magician’s benefit — fae are a lot more powerful than us, and having access to our power doesn’t let them use it like we do. So they put something in about what they get. Often for a magician to do a certain type and amount of magic in service to them, or for them to be fed and sheltered if they wish to live within our world. Sometimes clothed, but some of them really hate contracts with that in, too. Brownies usually have a lot about housing, it’s in their nature to bind themselves to buildings, so having negotiated rights to one they like can be a big incentive.”

“What about when the magician’s going into the fae’s world?” Martin asks.

“Probably more about service,” Sasha says. “That doesn’t tend to be taught in classes so much, they assume you’re going to have a career in _this_ world.”

“Maybe too much service,” says Tim. “Judging by Melanie.”

Sasha nods. “Bad contracts can happen in either direction. Humans can break them, but a lot of fae will kill you for the insult.”

“I don’t know if she wants to get free,” Martin says. “She’s trying to heal herself so she can go back quicker.”

All three of them fall silent for a moment and then Tim shrugs. “Not really our business,” he says.

“Yeah,” Martin says. “But, still, if she’s in trouble…”

“I’ll talk to her,” Sasha says. “See if I can get her to open up a bit.”

Tim salutes her with his beer. “You’re a brave woman, Sasha.”


	6. The Fair Ones

Martin winds up staying late. Melanie’s presence has distracted him badly enough all day he’s hardly got anything done, and it’s a relief to be alone in the office and race through getting his hypothesis written.

When he finally stretches and decides it’s definitely past time to go home he realises the light is still on under Jon’s door. He hears Jon’s voice, muffled through the door and speaking an unfamiliar language, and knocks tentatively before he realises a word in another language is likely to mean spellcasting.

“Come in,” Jon calls.

“Sorry,” Martin says, pushing the door open. “It’s just late, I didn’t realise you were casting, I wouldn’t have interrupted…”

“I’m not,” Jon says, amused. “I’m doing Sasha a favour and recording some variant spell pronunciations she’s been testing. She wanted someone to do the recordings who wouldn’t cast by saying them.”

“Oh, right. It doesn’t work like that for you?”

“It doesn’t,” Jon says.

“It’s late,” Martin repeats. “You should be getting home.”

He’s expecting to be brushed off, but Jon nods and shuts his laptop down. “Thank you, Martin,” he says. “For, um. Reminding me. I’ll be going the same direction as you if you don’t mind waiting while I put this away.”

“‘Course not,” Martin says, feeling something warm and fuzzy but also a bit squirmy in his stomach.

Jon seems less self-assured than usual as they walk together and Martin isn’t sure whether to feel bad for snapping at him this morning or vindicated that it made an impression. He starts talking mostly to show Jon that he’s not still mad, they can go back to normal now.

“I was talking to Tim and Sasha at lunch,” he says. “We’re all worried about Melanie. Sasha thinks it might be a bad contract.”

“Obviously,” Jon says.

“Obviously?”

Jon looks at Martin and, oh, there’s the judgement he expects although also mixed with concern. Jon sighs, but he visibly bites back whatever he was about to say and replaces it with, “Some fae have very powerful and emotionally charged magic. They — we — can overwhelm magicians. Anyone contracting with that kind of fae ought to put some sort of limit in the contract, something about how much magic the fae is allowed to push on them at once.”

Martin sneaks a sidelong glance at Jon, all four of whose eyes are open and shining in the lamplight since he’s taken his reading glasses off for the walk. Jon’s wearing a neat suit over slightly unbrushed fur, plastic claw sheaths still on, expression meditative. Melanie’s drowning in battle rage, from the sound of it, but what would it be like to be overwhelmed by Jon’s magic? He’s never seemed overly emotional. Is there something hidden behind the facade of devoted researcher? Or is that, itself, what you could drown in? Jon’s passion for knowing, that can make him forget to eat or go home or do anything but follow the threads of his research?

Martin looks away quickly and hopes he’s not blushing. “I didn’t know that,” he says, voice slightly higher than usual. “That’s the sort of thing you’d find out, I guess, if you were looking into contracting with that kind of fae.”

“If they were honest, or if you ran it past a specialist lawyer or a magician who’s taken the right classes,” Jon says. “It might be less widely known than I’d thought. It wouldn’t apply to most fae and obviously I need to know.”

“So you can make it impossible to take advantage of anyone you contract with,” Martin says, fondly. “You wouldn’t do it anyway.”

Jon coughs. “Anyway,” he says. “With Melanie. I’ve heard there are amulets that can cut off a magician’s ability to draw on their fae’s magic, but they’re very rare and valuable. The police have a few, for situations where they really need them, but there hasn’t been a crime here.”

“Too bad,” Martin says. “That would be kind of perfect. Cut her off so she can make a decision with a clear head, and then if she still wants to go back she can take it off.”

“I’ll look into it,” Jon says, hesitantly. “I suppose it’s none of my business, in a way, but Melanie _has_ been placed in my department.”

* * *

Martin’s not terribly surprised to suddenly find Peter behind him in the library the next day. “Don’t _do_ that,” he says, once he’s got over being startled.

“Sorry,” Peter says, not particularly repentant. “How are you today?”

“I _was_ fine until you decided to scare me to death.” Martin sighs. “We’re a bit worried about our new co-worker. Do you — do you know anything about amulets that can cut off a magician from their fae’s power?”

“What happened?” Peter grabs Martin’s shoulder, pulling him around so he can run anxious silver eyes over him.

“What?” Martin asks.

“She’s dangerous enough that you want to cut off her power source. What did she do?”

“No, no, it’s not… I’m fine, Peter, really. We’re worried _about her_. Jon says some fae can overwhelm humans with their magic, make them feel things.”

“Oh,” Peter lets go. “That makes sense I suppose.”

Martin thinks about the stand-off between Jon, Peter and Booth, how different Michael had felt despite his intention to protect Sasha. About how powerful and rare finfolk are. “You’re not one of those kinds of fae, then?”

“I might be.”

“You might be,” Martin repeats flatly.

Peter shrugs. “Jonah did put something in the contract about how much magic I’m allowed to feed him at once. I don’t suppose he would have done it if he didn’t need to.”

Martin sighs a much longer sigh.

“Are these amulets rare and valuable?” Peter asks, brightly.

“Yeah,” Martin says.

“I might know someone who could find one, then.”

Martin looks up. “One of the Institute’s contacts?”

“In a sense. He’s more of a personal acquaintance, but he does deal with the Institute. With everyone, really.” Peter smiles, enjoying being cryptic. “I’ll check when he’s in the country next.”

* * *

Jon’s less pleased than Martin thought he would be when he passes on this information on.

“Who’s paying for it?” he says, flatly.

“Uh, I don’t know, I guess I thought Peter would… Christ, that’s kind of awful of me, I don’t even know if it’s his money or Jonah’s.”

“He almost certainly has his own money,” Jon says. “The finfolk around the British Isles raid sunken ships. But you shouldn’t take that kind of favour from a fae.”

Martin thinks guiltily about how willing he’s been to let Peter buy him drinks. “Neither of us has the money, though,” he says. “And Melanie kicked a hole in the drywall yesterday.” She scares him but also it’s got to be miserable being that angry all the time. Especially if the anger isn’t even hers.

Jon nods. “Let me think about it. We won’t need a solution until Peter’s friend is in the country.”

Martin does let Jon think over the next few weeks, the only option when Jon snaps at him every time he brings it up and sends him back to work with a lecture on all the things he’s doing too badly to waste time bothering Jon. It’s obvious Jon doesn’t have a solution though, and that he’s fretting far more than he needs to over something that isn’t his responsibility in the first place. At the very least, Martin thinks, as Jon’s fur deteriorates to the point where he’s pulling unconsciously at knots during meetings, he shouldn’t be shouldering it alone.

When Martin awkwardly broaches it with Peter, mentioning that Jon is worried about who’s going to pay for the amulet, Peter gives him a sideways blink and says, “I am, of course, your friend and I already talked about it.”

It’s the last straw. Martin makes a cup of tea, guiltily mutters a charm spell he’s memorised under his breath, and corners Jon in his office.

“I need to talk to you,” he says.

“Martin, I really don’t have time,” Jon answers.

“You’ll have to make some,” Martin says. He puts the cup of tea down on Jon’s desk. “Peter says you talked to him about the amulet.”

“It’s nothing. I talked to him and he, well, he hasn’t agreed to pay for it yet but we reached an understanding. It won’t be a problem.” Jon is picking at a knot of fur on his wrist, frowning because he can’t actually get it out with plastic on his claws.

“It’s not nothing. You look awful…”

“Thanks,” Jon mutters.

“…you, you look _worried_. All the time. You’ve been snapping at us. Peter says he’s agreed to pay, but, but whatever he said it’s really upset you, and… please, Jon, don’t shut me out like this.” He twists a little charm into the last sentence, the spell feeling like honey on his lips. Just a touch of _I’m hurt and do you really want to hurt me worse by lying_ , and wonders if he overdid it when Jon’s expression crumples.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” he mutters. “It’s. It’s not your _fault_ and it shouldn’t be your problem…”

“It shouldn’t be yours, either,” Martin says.

“I don’t mean Melanie, I mean Peter. He. Um. I asked him what would be a fair trade for him buying the amulet, something that would leave no one in his debt and he said. He said I should promise him that when Jonah asks me to be his familiar I would say ‘yes’.”

Martin feels his whole body go cold, starting with a lump of ice in his stomach. “You didn’t.”

“No,” Jon says. “Not… not yet. I’ve got until his friend’s boat comes in to decide.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Martin says. The cold has reached his brain, throwing everything into frozen clarity. He pulls out his phone and scrolls to Peter’s number, texting _”Meet me in the library. Now.”_ and immediately turning his phone off, then he stands up and turns to leave.

“Martin, wait!” Jon reaches for him, stumbling across the desk between them.

But Martin doesn’t.

* * *

Peter’s waiting in the library and his concerned expression turns to apprehension when he sees Martin’s.

“What the hell did you think you were doing, saying that to Jon?” Martin says.

“It was a fair bargain,” Peter says. “Fae to fae.”

“And what’s _fair_ about pushing Jon into slavery to get yourself out?”

Peter tilts his head. “Any bargain’s fair if it’s agreed to.”

His hollow, airy tone is getting on Martin’s last nerve and Martin pushes forward into Peter’s space, ignoring the fog gathering around them. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And coming from you the most pathetic. Is that how you cope with making a bad contract because you were too stupid to know better? It was fair because you agreed to it and whatever you do to get out of it, that’s fair too?”

Peter’s fingers are lengthening into claws, but he still steps back, pressing into the bookcase. He’s starting to fade and Martin grabs his arm before he can, Peter squirming in his grasp like the fish he is. “That’s how it is for fae,” Peter protests. “We make bargains and we keep them. I would have bought the amulet for _you_ but your friend wanted to do it this way and it’s his bargain to keep.”

Martin says, “It’s cruel.”

“Kindness is a human thing,” Peter answers.

Martin shakes him. “That’s just an excuse. Jon’s kind.” People who only know him in the little things might disagree, but no one can argue with the burning, stupid, kindness of wanting to sell himself for someone he barely knows. A soft noise of suprise and protest comes from behind Martin and he realises Jon is here too, that he’s followed and is watching. Martin tries to ignore him, tries to continue to say what he needs to with the heat of a blush trying to melt the ice encasing him. “If you force Jon into a contract with Jonah I will never, never forgive you,” he says. “I don’t care whether you think you’re not capable of kindness. If this kind of scheme is all you’re capable of then, well, it won’t do you any good if you can’t have me, will it? You’re too afraid to stand alone. Take it back and go cling to Jonah, no one else would have you.”

Peter shoves a palm against Martin’s chest. There are claws, but they’re not digging in, he’s just trying to get some space. “That’s not fair,” Peter says.

“Fairness is a fae thing,” Martin answers.

Peter takes a deep breath and looks over Martin’s shoulder. “The bargain’s off. I won’t accept it now.”

Jon makes a helpless sound of protest, but Martin lets go of Peter’s arm and Peter immediately fades.

Martin turns to look at Jon and sees how large his eyes are, swallowing up his face. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“I thought he’d kill you,” Jon says.

Martin realises that he just shoved an incredibly powerful fae into a bookcase and insulted him and suddenly feels shaky. He wishes he could wrap an arm around Jon, who looks just as bad, but he doesn’t dare. “I’m okay,” he says. “Let’s, um. Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

Jonah stops Martin on the way into work the next day. “I’ve been underestimating you, Martin,” he says. “You might make a fine magician.”

“What?” Martin says, blankly.

“Fae can be difficult to handle, but you put Peter in his place very nicely. Not that that’s _particularly_ hard,” Jonah says. “Still, being able to handle powerful fae gives you potential. You should think about it.”

He walks off with a wolfish little smirk.


	7. Up In The Air

Martin keeps his head down for the next few weeks. Melanie scares him and on top of that he feels horribly guilty about her and like he deserves it any time she yells at him. Even though it’s _not his fault_ that Peter’s vanished completely or that he isn’t answering his phone. Martin wasn’t okay with Jon being sacrificed even if Jon was (and if anything good has come out of this it’s that Jon is warier around Jonah now).

The forms Martin’s carrying a stack of — he’s doing a favour for Rosie and dropping them off to various departments as he goes past — are suddenly blown out of his arms by a strong gust of wind. He chases after them as they dart up the stairs to the roof exit. Someone’s left the door open, that must be where the breeze is coming from, and he grabs the last one right in the open doorway before someone says. “Hello there.”

Martin looks up and then looks most of the way back down. The creature in front of him is barely the size of a toddler, a withered little skeleton in a brightly coloured suit that must have been tailored for him. A spriggan, he realises, a creature of either the depths or the heights, either deep caves or high cliff faces, and given to wonton destruction either way.

“Um. Does Jonah know you’re here?” Martin asks.

“Oh, I’m sure he does,” says the Spriggan. “Now, you must be Martin. You’re the one who has Peter all upset, yes?”

“I’m not sure how that’s any of your business,” Martin says. He can feel the wind plucking at the papers in his hand, and at his clothes, even from the shelter of the doorway. Retreat seems like the wisest option, but then this creature might be offended and he doesn’t think being indoors would really stop the storm if it was.

“Don’t be like that. I’ve been listening to phone calls about you all week.”

Martin scowls. “If Peter’s got something to say he can say it himself.”

“He’s not big on confrontation,” the spriggan says. “It might be a finfolk thing. They’re usually not.”

“Come on,” says Martin. “They’re predators.”

“Ah, yes,” says the spriggan, pointing a finger at the air. “But they hunt alone, and that means going after the unwary. If you fight back they usually let go and dive — plenty of room to get away from anything in the ocean. Then again, they might just make sure you stay lost at sea for a few weeks until you’re easier to catch.” He shrugs. “Where was I?”

“The eating habits of finfolk?” Martin suggests sarcastically.

“My point is, between the ocean and the mist, they don’t learn to face things head on. Peter especially. He used to swim up the rivers into the cities when he was a sprat, but he was more afraid of the humans than they were of him. He always dived if they saw him.”

Martin wonders whether this younger Peter had eaten the humans he was afraid of if he’d caught them off guard. The image of a younger Peter, staring up from the surface of the water at the alien world around him, curious and disconnected, still hits somewhere inside him. Some sense of affinity.

“He’s not afraid of me,” Martin says.

The spriggan purses his lips. “I’ll admit that’s a new development.”

Martin shakes his head. Peter’s been clinging to him because he’s soft and unthreatening, he _knows_ that. He’d been upset to find that Martin had priorities other than being a cushion for him. That’s all. He could have clawed Martin to shreds and they certainly both know it.

“The point is, do you want things to stay like this?” the spriggan says. A gust of wind lifts him, when it previously hadn’t even ruffled his suit, and lands him a few feet back on the balustrade that runs around the roof. Martin instinctively steps forward. “He won’t come back, you know,” the spriggan continues, now closer to Martin’s eye level. “Whether it’s instinct or not, you’d have to be contracted for him to stick around instead of cutting his losses.”

“I never asked him to hang around me in the first place,” Martin says. He tells himself he doesn’t miss Peter pointing him towards the books he needs in the library, never judging Martin’s ignorance on a subject. Even knowing that lack of judgement came from Peter’s own complete ignorance of what a magician of Martin’s supposed level could be expected to know, it was restful. He hadn’t even needed to decide whether to lie to Peter, because Peter didn’t care about the things he was lying about.

“You’ve got what you want then,” says the spriggan.

A gust of wind pulls Martin forward, making him yelp and yanking the papers out of his hands. When his streaming eyes have cleared the spriggan is gone and the papers he was meant to hand out for Rosie are spread across London.

As he trudges back down to reception to ask Rosie for more copies, Martin finds himself thinking of his mother. How many times has he tried to visit her only to be turned away? Why does he try when her words have cut him so often, when she’s made it clear she doesn’t want him? Maybe Peter’s just smarter than he is, to look at something broken and cut his losses before it can hurt him further.

* * *

Martin hands the expense forms to Tim and Sasha and sets Jon’s aside for the moment. “You’d better appreciate these,” he says. “I had to go back and get Rosie to copy more of them after the first pile blew away. By the way, have you heard of any spriggans around here?”

“A spriggan, really?” says Sasha, looking up. “Was his name Simon Fairchild?”

“He didn’t say,” says Martin. “Maybe? He did look like someone who’d call themselves Simon Fairchild.”

“Why?” says Tim. “Someone you know?’

Sasha shrugs. “I sort of thought he was an urban legend. Apparently he’s been hanging around the Magnus Institute since it was built and no one’s done anything about it because he is sincerely interested in being a familiar if he finds the right person.”

“And he hasn’t found anyone in two hundred years?” Martin asks.

“If anyone shows interest he throws them off the roof,” Sasha says solemnly. “Or so I heard. Sometimes he catches them before they hit the ground.”

“And that counts as sincerely interested, does it?” says Martin.

“Apparently he’s waiting for someone to enjoy it,” says Sasha.

“Okay, don’t show interest in unfamiliar spriggans on rooftops,” says Tim, ruffling Martin’s hair. “Sounds like you had a narrow escape, Martin.”

“I wasn’t _interested_ ,” Martin says. He thinks he should have a word with Peter about complaining about him to people who might throw him off rooftops and then remembers he’s not talking to Peter at all.

* * *

Sasha comes in on Monday with a black eye. Martin shrugs his coat off and immediately goes over to look. “God, that looks awful, Sasha. What happened?” he asks.

Sasha shrugs. “I got some information out of Melanie.”

“You weren’t supposed to get beaten up over it!” Martin says. “Do you want some ice? Or some tea?”

“Tea would be lovely, thanks. Don’t you want to know what I found out?”

“Well, I mean, yes, but… tea first.”

Sasha laughs. “Actually, I’m going to make you wait until lunch. Melanie will be in soon, and I’ll be able to tell Tim and Jon at the same time if we all get lunch together.”

When Martin comes back with tea and ice, Jon is frowning at Sasha. “I’m still going to talk to Jonah about it. Being fae touched is not an excuse for assualting other employees, she should at the very least be suspended.”

“See him this afternoon,” Sasha suggests.

“Yes, all right,” says Jon. “After you present whatever you’ve uncovered at the cost of your eye.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Jon, I still have both my eyes. Even if that doesn’t seem like enough eyes to you.”

Jon hmphs. “It’s a small enough number that you should be careful with them.”

* * *

They opt for a pub lunch, Sasha picking a booth and getting her laptop out immediately while the rest of them decide what to order.

“Don’t tell me there’s a powerpoint already,” Tim says.

Sasha rolls her eyes at him and opens youtube. “Welcome to Ghost Hunt UK, today we’re investigating Ham House,” says the tinny voice of Melanie. She sounds upbeat. Personable. “Now, a lot of ghost sightings turn out to be fae — and let’s all acknowledge the overlap there — but Sarah here tells me she’s not sensing fae magic.”

Sasha shifts the laptop so Martin can see the screen. Melanie is on it, dressed casually but somehow neater than he’s used to. Less feral. Next to her is a short woman with cropped brown hair, her features as regular as a doll’s and as subtly inhuman. Tim tenses and Martin remembers that he doesn’t like sidhe.

“Not getting anything here at all,” Sarah says, sounding mildly amused.

For a moment the flash of annoyance on Melanie’s features makes her look more familiar, but then she smiles at the camera. “There you have it,” she says. “It’s always been an open question whether fae can sense ghosts, but they can sense each other just fine. Still, I’ve got salt and bread in my pockets and a steel knife for emergencies. Now —”

Sasha pauses the video. “She doesn’t actually find anything in this one, although she delivers a decent history lesson and some spooky camera work,” she says. “But this was the last one Sarah was with her on. She met up with troupe of sidhe and decided to join them rather than keep working with humans.”

“So she needed a new fae to work with,” says Martin. “But, _Booth?_ ”

Jon sighs. “It makes some sense,” he acknowledges reluctantly. “The Sluagh have an affinty for ghosts. As Melanie says, there’s an overlap and they’re right on the edge of it. If they ever were human they don’t remember, but you get more of them showing up at the sites of fresh battles and they don’t remember why. Contracting with one would hardly be worth doing just to keep her little _ghost show_ running, but if she was really that committed it would give her an advantage.”

“She was paying her father’s nursing home bills,” Sasha says. “Still _is_ paying them. She needed to keep her show competitive.”

The waitress arrives just then and Martin stumbles his way through ordering a burger so badly that Tim takes pity and orders for him. It’s hard to tear his eyes away from the image of Melanie on the screen, smiling confidently at her viewers. It’s hard not to think of what he’d be willing to do to keep his mother comfortable.

“She does still need to be suspended if she’s a danger to the rest of you,” Jon says, once they’ve got their meals in front of them. “I’ll try to talk Jonah into paid leave, but he should never have placed her in our department in the first place.”


	8. Only Natural

They return to the Institute to find their department in chaos. There’s paper everywhere, two of the desks and all of the chairs are overturned, and in the middle of it is Melanie, snarling curses so angrily they sound like growls. There’s something written on her cast, neon scribbles Martin can’t make out with her moving. A ball of green light sweeps around the room and she tears open a packet, throwing an arc of white powder over it. Salt. It’s table salt not rock salt, it has to be a packet from the canteen, but it’s enough to throw Michael back into his true form with a painful looking spasm. He lands on a desk and whirls, claws out to protect himself. Melanie pulls a knife from her pocket and lunges. It’s only a pocket knife but. Steel. A steel knife.

Sasha jumps forward but Jon is quicker, his body seems to uncoil like a cat’s as he leaps. He lands against Melanie’s breastbone and, already overbalanced from the lunge, she goes down. The sharp cry when her plaster cast hits the ground sounds almost betrayed.

Melanie thrashes, but she can’t seem to shift Jon as he kneels up on her chest. He’s murmuring, “go to sleep, go to sleep,” like he did with Michael, but where it didn’t seem to have any effect there Melanie is going limp. Martin can make out the felt tip scribbles on her cast now, a mixture of rude words, crude pictures, and fractals that almost hurt to look at. Melanie’s head falls back, eyes glittering slits under heavy lids, and Jon leans forward until he’s almost mouth to mouth with her. He seems dazed too, pupils huge in all four of his eyes, lips peeling back from his fangs while a black tongue darts out to touch Melanie’s lips.

“Hey, uh, boss?” Tim says, and Martin realises with sudden horror that Jon isn’t going to stop.

Sasha’s the quickest of them to react. She grabs Jon around the waist and tries to haul him up off Melanie, but for all the good it does Jon might as well be a statue. Tim grabs Jon’s left arm and Martin forces himself to move forward and grab the right. It’s thin under his hand, just skin and bone under a layer of velvety fur, but Jon’s so heavy it’s like he’s made of granite. He seems to get heavier as they pull, Martin has to let go of him with one hand to support himself on the desk Michael’s still sitting on, and suddenly Martin’s afraid to let go because without them holding up Jon’s weight he might break Melanie’s ribs.

Something nudges up against the side of Martin’s hand and he turns to look, seeing a pile of salt packets lying on the desk. Had Melanie put them there? Why hadn’t she had them in her pockets? Martin grabs a packet and brings it up to his mouth to tear it open with his teeth. It’s only table salt, it won’t hurt Jon, it might not do anything at all since he only has the one form, but maybe it will shock him out of this… this…

Martin tips salt over Jon’s head and Jon is suddenly almost weightless in his hands, sending them all flying backwards. Jon kneels up, all four eyes closed, and rubs at them with his palms in distressed motions. Did he get salt in his eyes? Has Martin _blinded_ him?

Tim groans and then gets up and snags a sports bag from the remains of his own desk. “Okay, boss,” he says. “This is a water bottle. Open your eyes and look up.”

Jon obeys and afterwards he blinks his eyes, red and irritated but still working, and says, “Thank you, Tim,” in the smallest voice Martin has ever heard. His fur is plastered to his head with the water and he looks like a wet cat.

They all look at Melanie. Jon stands up, brushing salt off his suit and wincing. “I-I think I’d better go home. I expect I’ll get formal notice of suspension tomorrow.”

Martin takes a step towards him, “I can walk you home if —”

Jon holds up a hand, claw sheaths still incongruously in place. “Not now, Martin. Please.” And he walks out without even going to his office to gather his things.

* * *

It’s Martin who collects Jon’s things. After he’s made tea for Tim and Sasha, and Melanie, who didn’t want it, and hot milk for Michael, who was having a furiously whispered argument with Sasha but still stopped to thank him, he goes to Jon’s office. If Jon is going to be suspended, he’ll probably want his things. Martin could stop by his house to drop them off. Martin sits down at Jon’s desk, reaches out to pick up the pile of paper in front of him and, alone for the first time since Jon left, starts to cry.

He’s not sure how much later it is when a coat is draped around his shoulders. He jerks his head up, looking around to find no one there, before his eyes fall on the steaming mug of tea on the corner of the desk. He takes a mouthful. It’s horrible.

“Peter?” he asks.

Peter reluctantly fades in on the other side of Jon’s desk.

“How long have you been here?” Martin says.

“Not long. I just got here with the tea,” Peter says.

But Peter had been moved to make tea, which means he knew Martin was crying. “And before that?” Martin asks.

“I followed the crashing noise earlier,” Peter says, fidgeting with Jon’s papers. “Nasty fight, that.”

Martin takes a deep breath. “If you were there the whole time, why didn’t you _help?_ ”

“I did.” Peter looks hurt. “I brought you all that salt. Where did you think it came from?”

The salt. Which had just appeared under Martin’s hand. “Well, thank you,” he says, deflating slightly. “Wait, if you had salt, why didn’t _you_ use it?”

“Didn’t want to get it on my hands and get stuck with a tail,” Peter says. “And I wasn’t sure you’d actually be willing to hurt Jon to stop him from feeding. Didn’t want that to be my decision, you might have been angry.”

 _Hurt Jon to stop him from feeding._ Martin buries his face in his hands. “I suppose I just seem totally unreasonable to you,” he says.

Peter stays silent for a long moment and then says, “I don’t think you want the answer to that.” Martin hears the creak as Peter leans on the desk. “Not that I see why he’s so upset either. It’s impolite to feed on his own subordinate, but he’s got to eat and Jonah’s unlikely to really suspend him.”

It occurs to Martin that Peter, for all his issues, doesn’t have any hang ups about what he is. Which is fair, isn’t it? It’s not as if Martin goes around feeling guilty for being human. (Not usually. Not unless he’s been thinking about global warming too much.) But Jon, Jon who was raised by humans, who holds down a human job and makes himself part of the human world by his own efforts rather than by contract, is as disturbed by his own nature as Martin is. It’s not as if moroi are even terribly harmful by fae standards, not unless they actively try to drain someone. A few days to a few weeks of lethargy, paranoia and anxiety, not pleasant but entirely survivable. Except the thought of Jon’s wide eyes and his black tongue on Melanie’s lips makes Martin shudder.

“Does Jon…” Martin trails off, trying to formulate the words he wants. “Does Jon talk to any of the fae here? Other fae here?”

He glances up at Peter, who shrugs. “Gerard, of course. None of the others that I know of.”

“I wish he was here now,” Martin says. He’d been glad when Gerard left but he hadn’t been thinking then about how little contact Jon has with other fae, how ill-equipped Tim, Sasha and Martin himself are to deal with problems related to being a fae. Jon had mentioned another friend once, hadn’t he? Another fairy knight like Gerard. Not that Martin would have any idea how to contact her, or what to say if he could.

Peter reaches over Martin’s shoulder to twitch his coat around him a little tighter and it occurs to Martin that for someone who seeks comfort shamelessly Peter really has no idea how to offer it.

“There’s something I really ought to tell you,” Peter says. “This is probably not the best time, but considering what just happened it’s certainly relevant. It’s not, well, this isn’t an attempt to put pressure on you.”

“Spit it out,” Martin says.

“My friend’s ship’s come in,” Peter says. “The, er, the one with the amulet.”

Martin looks up at once. “Tell me where it is,” he says.

“No, no. Martin, he is _not_ someone you want to be in debt to. I’m not sending you to him.”

“We need it though,” Martin says. “We need to help Melanie.” _Jon_ needs to help Melanie, because maybe then he can let go of the guilt of nearly feeding on her. Maybe it will be enough to fix things. “Peter, if you approach Jon about this…”

“I know, I know. He’d take the bargain now out of whatever melodramatic sense of debt being raised human instilled in him. And you’d never talk to me again.” Peter sighs. “ _Listen._ I’ll buy the amulet and then at least it will be in the country when you figure out how to afford it. Otherwise you’re going to miss your chance at it entirely.”

Martin looks at him. “You’ll sell it to me for the same price you buy it for? In money?”

“Yes, I swear, if you buy it from me I will sell it to you for the same amount of money I paid. And if you bring me the money I will sell it.”

Martin turns the words over in his head, but he doesn’t see any loopholes. He can’t shake the feeling Peter’s up to something, but maybe it’s just paranoia. “All right,” he says. It’s not as if he can stop Peter buying it anyway. “Let me know when you’ve got it.”

“That’s the thing,” Peter says. “I don’t know what this sort of amulet should feel like. If I go alone he could sell me anything and then where will we be?”

“You want me to come with you,” says Martin. He takes a deep breath, unsure whether he wants to laugh or start crying again. “Peter, _I_ don’t know what that kind of amulet feels like either. I don’t even know what that _means_.”

Peter blinks at him. “So who does know?”

Martin considers that and finds more solid emotional ground. “Jon, probably,” he says. “That’s… that’s okay, right? I need to talk to him anyway and he’ll probably feel better for coming along. And _you_ —” he jabs a finger at Peter “— won’t pressure him into anything.”

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear Jon and Martin will talk next chapter.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [not too not familiar](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22298128) by [gummies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gummies/pseuds/gummies)




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